Singer Rihanna talked openly in her interview with Oprah Winfrey about her relationship with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown and about the time he assaulted her after a pre-Grammy Awards party in 2009.

The pop star said in the interview, which aired on August 19, that she "still loves" Brown but that the two are not together romantically. She said the two have been working mending their friendship.

"We've been working on our friendship again and now we're very, very close friends," Rihanna said in the interview. "We've built a trust again and that's it. We love each other and we probably always will and that's not something we're going to try to change."

"That's not something you can shut off, if you've ever been in love," she added.

Oprah then asked Rihanna if she was seeing Brown, alluding to rumors the two have reconciled romantically.

"No," Rihanna, 24, said. "He's in a relationship of his own. I'm single but we have maintained a very close friendship ever since the restraining order has been dropped."

Following the assault arrest, Brown pleaded guilty to a felony charge was sentenced to five years of probation and six months of community service and was ordered by the courts to receive domestic violence courses for a year.

"We just worked on it little by little," Rihanna said about the friendship, "and it has not been easy."

Rihanna went on to say the two met up recently in St. Tropez on a mutual friend's yacht. She admitted that when she sees Brown, "My stomach drops, yes, and I have to maintain this poker face and not let it get to the outer part of me."

"I think he was the love of my life," she said. "He was the first love and I see that he loved me the same way."

The singer also talked about being named the "Sexiest Woman Alive" by Esquire magazine.

"I do not think about things like that. That's not my goal," she said. "It's flattering. Inaccurate, but flattering."